Top10 supported soccer teams – Looking for edges – Part 2 of 3

1. If many “play-for-fun” supporters bet on their favourite team, can laying them pre-game be a winning strategy?2. What if one of these teams take a one goal lead in-play. Should I back or lay?
3. What if their opponent takes the lead by one goal. Should I back or lay?

The data is from in-play match-odds from 2013, and the bet is calculated from the first recording after the first goal that also has an over-round of maximum 2 %.

I mined through the data and found something interesting when I separated league matches from other matches (cups, champions league etc). Domestic league are marked as “Y” and others as “N” in the table:

Backing the top10 teams in other matches but league-matches has been a good profitable strategy the latest years, and has worked well both when the top10 team is playing home and when playing away.

The league matches show the opposite trend, backing the top10 team would have been something similar to setting fire to your money. On the other hand, laying them would have been profitable (including the negative yield laying away in 2016).

In the next post I will deep into the situation where the opponent to the top10 team takes a one goal lead…